After a fire closed a fuel dock in the Whittier Harbor this week, city officials say it’s operational again.
The fire started on Tuesday, sinking a boat and forcing two people to be medevaced out with injuries. It also resulted in the closure of the dock, the only refueling station for many vessels.
It also occurred right before a 36-hour commercial fishing opening in the Prince William Sound on Wednesday. Whittier Harbormaster David Borg says time was of the essence to get the dock ready for fueling.
“We knew we had about a 30-hour window to get fuel back down to the dock, just based on the fact that when that 36-hour opener shut down, we would have the fleet coming back to Whittier to offload,” Borg said. “And they take that opportunity to refuel, resupply with food and so forth.”
Borg says Shoreside Petroleum, the operator of the dock, was able to salvage the sunken boat and sent a fuel truck to the area on Wednesday.
“Then they ran a diesel and a gasoline hose down off of that truck to the fuel dock — the portions that weren’t affected by the fire,” Borg said. “So they were able to service relatively the entire fleet, pretty efficiently.”
Borg says Shoreside has restored about 50 percent of the dock, and anticipates fully restoring lost fuel pumps by July 14.
Borg commended the “herculean” effort taken on by Shoreside to get the dock operational in a short period of time. At this point, it’s unclear what started the fire, but Borg has a few ideas. He said the vessel that caught fire had just been fueled up.
“It could have been an ignition situation,” Borg said. “It could’ve been an electrical short. It could’ve been fuel fumes built up in the bilge area of the vessel. Maybe the blower wasn’t effective enough as it should have been, and when the vessel was started it could’ve ignited those fuels that were in the bilge system.”
While the weather hasn’t been great in the area, Borg says from what he’s seen on incoming vessels, it’s looking like a good fishing season in Prince William Sound.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
